You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Scrambling for Relevance

It's not hard in New Zealand, these days, to find plenty of material to poke fun at.  The gummint looks like a huge roadside advertisement peppered with shotgun pellets.  The locals are showing their respect, no doubt.

Many commentators have poked the borax at the government's propensity to set up commissions or inquiries into anything and everything that moves.  If you brush your teeth in the morning, by lunchtime the government will have announced an inquiry into dental cosmetics which will "report" in nine months time.  We wait with baited malodorous breath.

Prime Minister Ardern cannot help herself.  Hardly a day goes by without her grandly announcing the 176th gummint inquiry into some great looming apocalypse du jour.  Each announcement assures us that we going to be taking a great leap forward.  It's all bureaucratic self-serving rubbish.

Liam Hehir, writing a guest post in Kiwiblog, gives us a hilarious account of one of the latest pronouncements from the Throne of Wonderland Wizard.

The rumour was that the prime minister, returning from leave, would hit the ground running with some substantive announcement on Monday that was going to put business at ease. Specifically, the announcement was going to address the subject of trade. . . .

In the event, all Ardern announced was something called “Trade for All”. As far as I can tell, it’s some kind of working group (if you can imagine such a thing from this government). It’s going to consider how to ensure the benefits of trade can be more fairly better distributed. And, to do this, it’s going to tour the country holding public meetings.

So, you know, if you’re a panel beater who’s been hard at it all day you can go along to some meeting to talk about the social dimensions of international trade for a few hours before going home to complete your GST return. What small business owner wouldn’t jump at that opportunity? You can hear their sighs of relief already!

More codswallop from the Government.  Another pig's ear dressed up as a silk purse.  Another waste of time and our money.